ad come in with his departure.

"I have no choice, Captain Percy, but to keep you still under restraint,
both here and when we shall reach Jamestown," said the Governor. "All
that the Company, through me, can do, consistent with its duty to his
Majesty, to lighten your confinement shall be done"--

"Then send him not again into the hold, Sir Francis!" exclaimed the
Treasurer, with a wry face.

The Governor laughed. "Lighter and sweeter quarters shall be found. Your
wife's a brave lady, Captain Percy"--

"And a passing fair one," said Claybourne under his breath.

"I left a friend below in the hold, your Honor," I said. "He came with
me from Jamestown because he was my friend. The King hath never heard
of him. And he's no more a pirate than I or you, your Honor. He is a
minister,--a sober, meek, and godly man"--

From behind the Secretary rose the singsong of my acquaintance of the
hold, Dr. John Pott. "He is Jeremy, your Honor, Jeremy who made the town
merry at Blackfriars. Your Honor remembers him? He had a sickness, and
forsook the life and went into the country. He was known to the Dean
of St. Paul's. All the town laughed when it heard that he had taken
orders."

"Jeremy!" cried out the Treasurer. "Nick Bottom! Christopher Sly! Sir
Toby Belch! Sir Francis, give me Jeremy to keep in my cabin!"

The Governor laughed. "He shall be bestowed with Captain Percy where
he'll not lack for company, I warrant! Jeremy! Ben Jonson loved him;
they drank together at the Mermaid."

A little later the Treasurer turned to leave my new quarters, to
which he had walked beside me, glanced at the men who waited for him
without,--Jeremy had not yet been brought from the hold,--and returned
to my side to say, in a low voice, but with emphasis: "Captain Percy has
been a long time without news from home,--from England. What would he
most desire to hear?"

"Of the welfare of his Grace of Buckingham," I replied.

He smiled. "His Grace is as well as heart could desire, and as powerful.
The Queen's dog now tuggeth the sow by the ears this way or that, as it
pleaseth him. Since we are not to hang you as a pirate, Captain Percy,
I incline to think your affairs in better posture than when you left
Virginia."

"I think so too, sir," I said, and gave him thanks for his courtesy, and
wished him good-day, being anxious to sit still and thank God, with my
face in my hands and summer in my heart.

CHAPTER XXVIII IN WHICH THE SPRINGTIME